Job 30:4
“They pluck salt herbs by the bushes. The roots of the broom are their food.”
What does Job 30:4 mean?
When Job describes people eating salt herbs and broom roots, he's painting a picture of the most desperate hunger and poverty. These weren't foods anyone would choose, but rather what the truly destitute would scavenge from wastelands when nothing else was available. Job uses this image to show how far some people have fallen, living at the absolute margins of survival in conditions so harsh that even bitter, barely-edible plants from the desert became their meal. It's his way of expressing the depth of human suffering and abandonment he's witnessing around him.